NIXON'S TAX PACKAGE: A MODEST START ON REFORM

FOR an Administration that prides itself on careful deliberation, last
week's tax proposals were put together with rather uncomfortable haste.
Presenting the Nixon program to the tax-writing House Ways and Means
Committee, Treasury Under Secretary Charls E. Walker sounded almost
apologetic when Chairman Wilbur Mills complained that the plan touched
only a few tax inequities. "We have tried to meet some of these things
head-on," Walker conceded. "But after all, we have had less than 100
days."

Despite its 19-item brevity, the Nixon package calls for changes of
considerable socialand perhaps political consequence....